November 1969: Palm Beach County’s own Woodstock
Adrienne Moore of Stuart asked about the “First Annual Palm Beach International Music and Arts Festival,” held Nov. 28-30, 1969, northwest of West Palm Beach.
The event was both the first and the last.
It drew 40,000 people to the 149-acre Palm Beach International Speedway, later the Moroso Motorsports complex and now back to its original name.
Officials fretted about health, sanitation and traffic, and were mortified by images of drugs and sex they’d seen 3½ months earlier at Woodstock.
They denied a permit to promoter David Rupp, who’d bought the track at foreclosure. He prevailed, but gained a new obstacle: Sheriff William Heidtman.
The sheriff set up surveillance cameras and positioned 150 deputies around the clock at nearby Pratt & Whitney.
Crowds tried to avoid the $20 entry, some swimming canals. Iron Butterfly came on first, 2 ½ hours after the gates opened.
Chilling rain fell and temperatures dropped into the 40s. Vendors ran short of food, and many of the 300 portable toilets were dismantled for firewood.
Helicopters flew acts — Jefferson Airplane, Sly Stone, Janis Joplin — from Singer Island.
Joplin, who’d die of an overdose in 10 months, trashed Heidtman and Gov. Claude Kirk on stage and sang while chugging Southern Comfort.
The Rolling Stones, paid $100,000, went on at 4 a.m. Monday and played a short stint for the few remaining.
The tally: 130 drug overdoses, 14 eye injuries, 42 intestinal disorders, 1,700 headaches and minor cuts, 1,000 reported conversions to Christianity, 130 drug arrests, and one death, of a teen struck by a truck. Rupp lost $300,000 to $500,000, “all the cash I had and all that I’d borrowed.”
In 1999, Heidtman — who would die at 91 in 2007 — dismissed as myths reports he planted alligators in canals and red ants in the fields, saying Florida always supplies plenty. But he did unapologetically say, “If I had it to do over again, I’d try to stop it.”
Palm Beach Post file photo: The ‘first annual’ Palm Beach International Music and Arts Festival was the first and the last event of its kind. Held in 1969, the festival featured Jefferson Airplane, Sly Stone, Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones.
Thanks for posting this FLASHBACK.
With the Woodstock aniversary this year, we’d been trying to “count back” to remember just when this took place. I graduated from Army Engineer OCS in Sept ‘69, bought my first new car - a ‘69 VW Camper Van - reported to my 1st duty station - The Clewiston Area Office, USACEC and was immediately sent TDY to Bay St. Louis / Waveland, MS for Hurricane Camille clean-up duty. I returned from that in mid November ‘69, saw the ads for this Palm Beach Rock Festival along with it’s headliners and just HAD TO GO.
It was a VERY interesting weekend - for sure! Who knows, one of those VW Campers in the photo - just might have been mine.
Being a WPB native, and having just finished chasing “The Turtles” and everyone else all over the country the previous summer, there was no way I was going to miss the “PB Pop Festival”, as it was known at the time. This was the only time I saw the Rolling Stones. They put on such a miserable performance that I never went to another of their concerts. Everyone else was great! I’ll remember Janis Joplin singing for all she was worth for the rest of my life.
I was there and it was a great time sans the weather. Cold, Wet, Miserable.. But excitement was all around. The first Rock Festival in these parts I do believe.
Janis rocked the house, two fisting her Southern Comfort from the piano, then coming to the edge of the stage and spitting it on me, ( My cherry trip so I didn’t care). Her jamming with Johnny Winter, Vanilla Fudge, and some of the Iron Butterfly was fantastic.
Alot of big name bands so who could forget.
The National Guard helicopters overhead and buzzing us all weekend. The police always sneaking around trying to intimidate.
WHAT FUN!!!!!!
I was drafted 2 months later so this was kinda my last hoorah for a while. All in All it was a great 3 days of music…
I also meant to reminisce about Wavy Gravy in his ww2 pilot helmet or whatever it was, guiding a car backwards trying to help them and backed them into the pond. I like to think he knew it was the police in unmarked car and put them in on purpose since you know he diden’t do drugs..
Thanks, for all the info. I remember it as a great weekend, where everyone came together in a peace loving atmosphere. My husband and I were there as vendors in an old school bus with different colored felt curtains in every window. We sold strob light candles and parapheranlia, incence, the whole Indian thing. I remember Janis and Sly and family Stone making the whole earth beat and leaving our booth to hear the music, my heart pulsing. I didn’t do drugs but all my friends did, but unlike drinking they were always mellow. Unfortuately, they didn’t all stop at marijuana. It rained terribly but everyone just kind of mellowed out..
I went by myself and joined up with some classmates, I was 17 a senior in high school in West Palm Beach. I remember being in what would seem another world to any one that was from the Palm Beaches. Eventually the weather made it very hard on you, but it was a total experience that is life changing to some. Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter were jamming for quite some time, with the help of Johnny’s little brother Edgar who I remember just ripping the saxophone up, and of course backed up by Vanilla Fudge. Boy what a moment in time. All the other bands were great also I remember Grand Funk, Spirit and Iron Butterfly. You could hear the music anywhere you went on the huge piece of PBIR property. So no matter where you were you heard the bands. I went home and got some food it was really impossible to eat out there they were not really prepared for more than 20,000 but there were more than 40,000. To leave the festival was not really hard to do beacause that lane was open on the B-Line Highway. But on Sunday morning the west bound lane was blocked all the way to Military Trail (Many Miles) So I took my Dad’s Willy’s 4-Wheel Drive Station Wagon back. I road on the side of the road and through the woods and made it back out there. This is where growing up a Florida Cracker comes in handy. By the time the Rolling Stones were able to show up I was so cold I could not concentrate. It was very hard to care about music at that point it was low 30’s and 4:00 am in the edge of the Everglades after alot of rain the previous day so it was cold and muddy. I am involved with the making of a documentary about the 1969 Palm Beach Pop Festival (First Annual Palm Beach Music and Arts Festival) you can find alot more info and many photos of the Festival at our new Palm Beach Pop site http://www.oldrockphoto.com/palmbeach.html or we still have the original http://www.palmbeachpopfestival
I am very happy to see someone else talk about this event. I was the official photographer and have some great memories, Janis And Johnny Jaming, Spirit had a fantastic set as did Grand Funk Railroad. I was backstage when the Stones arrived, it was frantic, the weather was freezing cold, I was standing around an 80 gallon drum with a fire in it, just to keep warm.The Stones arrived directly from their Madison Sq. Garden concert and performed the complete ” Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out ” set.I would like to hear from those who went, as I am working on a documentary on The Palm Beach Pop Festival at this time You can see my photos at http://www.palmbeachpopfestival.com ,or http://www.oldrockphoto.com I hope you like them, Peace, Ken.
i designed the poster for the 1969 Rock festival. i had the Sheriff investigate me because I illustrated grass on the bottom half of the Poster.. The promoter Dave Rupp asked me to get over to the Hotel where Janic Joplin was staying since she had tossed the TV out the window and was raising hell. The Sheriff would not do anything because he wanted it all to happen so he could prove he had been right about the hippies. I reprinted the poster 35 tears later and had a woman buy a framed print as a birthday gift for her husband being that he had been concieved at the Rock Festival. the poster is now a collector’s item and get calls from all over the country from collectors looking for an original print. I sold my last original print 10 years ago for more than ten times the price I was paid to design it!
**Flashback** Wow that was a great time, I had just worked with the Blues Magoos at thier show at the drag strip previous to this. I remember it, well most of it. Wet muddy all kinds of stuff to mess ya up, found out too late not to accept drinks you did not open, but that was fun too. I went to sleep in my Caddy and was awoke with live rock n roll, King Crimson was one of my favorites and when Janis called the sheriff Eichmann the crowd roared.
Hey Royce I still have my 1969 Rock Festival Poster and got Janis to sign it.
I got hired by Johnny Winters road crew and hauled them amps from there to Orlando, Jacksonville all the way to New Orleans that summer.
What a long strange trip its been.
PEACE